The average coffee drink (no milk, no sweetener) won’t make much of a dent in caloric intake for the day, with an average of 3-6 calories. If you don’t think you could give up your daily coffee, consider these stats: So what are these additions costing us, just to enjoy a cup of coffee? Many people add creamer to coffee to help them digest the acidic brew, or add sugar to make the bitter taste more palatable. These additions piggyback on caffeine to create negative side effects for our health. In addition to caffeine, consider everything else we add to coffee (or caffeinated tea). That’s why we feel so cranky if we’ve missed our usual cup of coffee, and why it’s such a tough dietary habit to kick. Unfortunately it’s also habit-forming, much like cigarettes and alcohol. Caffeine does have some amazing benefits for health, like improved memory and brain function. The first element here is, of course, the element of caffeine itself. We’ll also talk about why one might be better for your health than the other, and name a few herbal teas to try on your decaf journey.īefore we go into the big list of herbal tea benefits, let’s review the effects of a caffeine-drinking lifestyle. In this post, we’ll dive into the many benefits of reducing caffeine intake and sipping herbal teas. When the benefits of switching to herbal tea became obvious, I decided to stick with it. Next I ventured into decaf green tea, then decaf black tea. But I still needed a warm drink to get me going in the morning, so I switched to chamomile. It all started when the anxiety hit: caffeine jitters were the last thing I needed on top of, well, everything else. In short, caffeine wasn’t the problem – but it certainly wasn’t helping matters. My anxiety was intensified, and my usual relaxation techniques no longer worked. Unpopular opinion: I love the decaffeinated lifestyle.įaced with the relentless stressors and anxieties of 2020 – pandemic isolation, personal loss, wildfire evacuations – I found that the once coveted jolt from coffee was doing more harm than good.

Caffeinated herbal tea